“What’s new?” is the question we often ask of a person whom we haven’t seen for some time. We seem to have an obsession with the new. We’ll try anything new. We want to be the first to wear new fashions. To sell their wares, merchants advertize the new: a new book, a new look, a new model, a new taste. If it is “new,” we reason, it must also be “improved.” The preacher of Ecclesiastes does not agree. He wrote, “There is nothing new under the sun.” There is an old saying, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

On the other hand, Jeremiah in our text claims there is something new. Speaking for God, he promised a new covenant. The old covenant made at the time of Moses was broken by Israel. God’s promise of a new covenant was fulfilled by Jesus, who was the mediator of the ne…